Alan Caruba's blog is a daily look at events, personalities, and issues from an independent point of view. Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2015. With attribution, posts may be shared. A permission request is welcome. Email acaruba@aol.com.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Blowing Wind Up Your Skirt

By Alan Caruba

One of the keystones of the Obama administration’s energy policies has been a very expensive emphasis on “clean energy”, sometimes called “renewable energy”, allocating billions to the wind and solar energy producers. Like much of the “stimulus” bill that money is a waste.

The wind power trade group, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has been pouring big bucks into a public relations effort to convince Americans that wind is the energy source of the future and that acres of wind turbines should be installed to replace the proven sources, primarily coal-fired, natural gas, and nuclear plants currently providing more than 80% of the nation’s electricity needs.

Thanks to Freedom of Information requests, the Chicago Tribune revealed significant collusion among Department of Energy officials and AWEA, as well as other third-party special interest groups such as the Center for American Progress, a think tank that pushes Green and other liberal agendas.

The Tribune reported that an Assistant Secretary of Energy, Cathy Zoi, who formerly held top positions at Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, was charged with crafting renewable energy policy for the Obama administration and emails obtained revealed that she was working closely with AWEA to rebut and discredit a ground-breaking study by Dr. Gabriel Calzada of Madrid’s King Juan Carlos University.

Dr. Calzada’s research concluded that, for every “green job” the Spanish government created, 2.2 jobs were destroyed and that nine out of ten government-created “green jobs” were temporary at a time when Spain’s unemployment rate is at an all-time high, not unlike the situation in the U.S.

At the time that Dr. Calzada’s study was reported, the Obama administration was pushing “Cap-and-Trade” legislation through the House. This legislation would set up a system for the sale, auction, and trade of “carbon credits” based on the totally discredited assertion that “greenhouse gases”, primarily carbon dioxide, were “causing” global warming. The bill remains in the Senate awaiting a vote.

Back in January AWEA was ecstatic over an Obama administration award of $2.3 billion in “clean energy manufacturing tax credits and the President’s call for an additional $5 billion.” There is no economic or scientific justification for the waste of taxpayer dollars in this fashion.

“The Rhode Island deal calls for National Grid to pay an eye-popping 24 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity from Deepwater Wind’s proposed wind farm off Block Island for 20 years. That’s three times higher than the current price of natural-gas generated electricity—and the Rhode Island deal includes a 3.5 percent annual increase over the life of the contract.”

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, in February eleven wind turbines froze because their hydraulic fluid had turned to gel and oil lubricants were rendered sluggish. These kinds of problems do not occur in other sources of electricity. In Oregon, General Electric had announced a big wind project involving 338 wind turbines that it claimed would power 235,000 homes. Naturally, it was applying for federal subsidies.

In Great Britain, in January, its wind turbines representing six percent of total generating capacity and billions invested, supplied virtually no power most days because, as Dennis T. Avery, a former senior policy analyst for the U.S. State Department noted “The wind tends not to blow when and where it’s already cold.”

Avery pointed out that neither Denmark, nor Germany, leaders in wind energy projects, has decommissioned any fossil fuel plants. “The fossil generators are kept in ‘spinning reserve’ to keep the lights on in the schools, factories, and hospitals when the wind dies.”

The wind and solar energy industries, as well as the biofuels industry, continue to depend on government subsidies to exist, as opposed to private enterprises that have a long track record of providing affordable electricity.

First the government gives the wind energy producers your money and then you end up paying higher energy bills as a result. Both wind and solar energy depend on government mandates for their use. If cap-and-trade is enacted, you will be further taxed for its use.

These are facts you need to keep in mind every time President Obama speaks of “clean energy” and “green jobs.” Like so much else one hears from the TelePrompter-in-Chief, it has no relation to the truth.

3 comments:

sIt shows sheer desperation on the part of an administration when it commissions a committed 'warmist' to attempt to discredit such learned and proffessional research papers. Another excellent expose can be read at www.windenergy-the-truth.com.Likewise, in England, the Mad Hatter's Tea Party is in full swing and the Ministry of Silly Dreams is in full pursuit of a Cave and Candle tomorrow.As Christopher Booker (S.Telegrapgh) explains it, 40% of Britain's coal and nuclear generating capacity will be cominh off-line, soon, to fulfill EU Directives.One of the ways at providing any shortfall in power is actively encourage householders to erect solar panels and mini wind generators on their property. The government will pay for each kW/hour fed intothe grid. The economics are madness itself.No new coal fired generators will be allowed to be built UNLESS their is already IN PLACE a method of carbon capture. However, " .... experts in Texas, Michael and Christine Economides, have shown that it is impossible to inject such huge quantities of CO2 into underground aquifers – 20,000 tons a day for a 1GW generator ......" What makes all this interesting is that the Greenest of the arch Warmists, George Monbiot, has denounced the measures as a scandal.So we are locked in a race within the 'Special Relationship' partners - whose lights will fade the first and fastest?If ever confirmation was needed that our rulers aim is still on-track to decommission and to de-industrialise our civilisation,then this deliberate minimalisation of our energy availability serves to reinforce that certainty. Science and truth be damned because the agenda demands lies and subterfuge, Mickey Mouse Non-Science, people in high office and glib tongues.The agenda is moving steadily full steam ahead.Order your generators, now, folks or emmigrate to warmer climes.

Alan.Again, this is an example of the clever use of statistics to make you think these really are capable of providing meaningful amounts of power.How they do this is:

They know how much power that the proposed group of towers can deliver.They know the average power consumption for an average residence.They then divide that average into the total delivered from the towers, and viola, it 'looks' like a big number of houses is being supplied, hence giving the impression that it is an awful lot of power.

At no stage will those towers ever supply the full requirement for those residences.The power is supplied to the grid, where it is used by the three consumer groups, Residential (38%) Commerce (37%) and Industry (24%).

In a realistic environment the power actually supplied to the grid is only 22% of it's 'feasible' maximum Nameplate Capacity.

What this effectively means is that the group of towers (any group, anywhere) are only supplying their power for around 5 hours in every 24. This is not isolated as it is the current data for all the total inventory of German Wind towers, and in fact the current average for all US wind power.

In actual fact, from the Government's own database, the whole US inventory of all its wind towers supplies an amount of power to all US grids equal to the output from 4 Nuclear power plants.

The technology is not ready - to the point of absurdity. The only "renewable" power source that makes the slightest amount of snse is water, mostly because it can be stored when plentiful and released - but the drawbacks of dams are huge, too. However there are billions to be made in the equivalent of "investing" in DaVinci's parachute before even hot-air balloons had been invented.

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.